The sudden crack of a rifle-shot snapped from the arcade, and a puff of rock-dust flew from the corner of the Ka'aba, not two feet from the major's head.
"Come on, men!" cried the major.

"Away!" Some latent mysticism had been stirred in him; some vague, half-sensed superstition.

Nothing more natural than that a cold draught should have soughed from the pent interior of the temple, or that the air-liner, slowly turning as she hung above the Haram, should with her vast planes have for a moment thrown her shadow over the square.

But the Celt's imaginative nature quivered as he gripped the stone.
"You, quick, on the other end!" he cried to Emilio.

"You, Lombardo, steady her! So! Now--to the nacelle!" The rifles were opening a lively fire, already, as the men staggered over the prostrate Moslems, reached the nacelle and with a grunt and a heave tumbled the Hajar el Aswad into it.